“The dark night of the soul”, is interpreted to
suggest the darkness and terror of the nights that
were experienced by many during the Holocaust.
“Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that
deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered
my God and my soul and turned my dreams to
ashes.” Elie’s quote about the horrors of his first
night in the concentration camps expresses Elie’s
thoughts of the nights in the holocaust and the
darkness and hopelessness they possessed to
him.
Night to Elie represents the unknown and known
horrors that will be experienced by him and the
many other Jews in the Holocaust. The night to Elie
interprets as the horrible experiences that await
him at the ending of the night, and the unknown
horrors of the Holocaust.
“No human race is superior, no religious faith is inferior.
All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make
them.” This quote was made by Elie Wiesel in reference
to faith and race, it is understood by this quote to mean
that judging a person by a collective group is unjust and
only a racist person would make a judgment about the
personality of another by their race or faith.
In the context of Night faith is considered to be the
religion that you devote yourself to and follow. Elie’s
faith was the Kabbalistic works in the secrets of Jewish
mysticism, and he devoted himself to the studies of this
in order to learn more about the Jewish faith.
Night also expresses ideas about faith through Elie’s
altering thoughts about his religion and the faith of
others in the camps as Hitler attempts to destroy the
religious faith of the Jewish entirely, showing the
different ideas individual people have about faith and
race.
“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse
was contemplating me.” When Elie Wiesel
looks in the mirror at the end of the novel
this is what he sees himself as; a corpse
contemplating the small insignificant gap
between life and death. This small quote
from Elie ends the novel, showing the
dehumanization the Jews had undertook
throughout these years. This image shows
the starvation, the excruciating pain and
torture that was experienced by Jews
during the holocaust in an attempt to
eliminate their race. Elie Wiesel has so
amazingly captured the closeness the
people in the concentration camps were to
death and how they became to be in this
situation, so far away from feeling like a
actual human being.
Elie Wiesel as a young boy in Sighet is an innocent
child with out a worry in the world except that of his
studies in the Kabbalistic works, the secrets of
Jewish mysticism.
As Hitler begins to take power of Germany Elie
becomes more and more involved with the
Kabbalistic works, but his worries increase as the
beginnings of Hitler’s “final solution” start.
Throughout Elie’s experiences in the novel his
relationship with himself and his faith changes. He
becomes more aware of himself and others around
him, including his father and his lost sister and Elie Wiesel (center) as a young boy in Sighet.
mother. As Elie travels between life and death he
realizes about a lot about himself and grows into a
different person leaving behind the young boy and
his firm beliefs in God. As Elie grows his beliefs in
God become altered and he no longer knows what
he believes, but he becomes more aware of who
he is himself and what is important to him.